By Marnie Hammar
I curled into my comfy gray chair, one of my feet tucked under me, with my opposite knee raised to balance my red journal like a desk. Really, this was a posture of hope and expectancy. The battle in my mind needed to be stilled and time with Jesus was the weapon. My red journal stood ready to bear witness.
Here, now, on the other side of “amen” I confess, He didn’t say what I’d hoped to hear.
I wanted an instant solution for the pain that comes with being set aside — maybe something like, “Girl, I’m gonna take it all away right now,” and poof, no more pain. But what He spoke weaved into and around my heart more deeply than any quick fix could.
If I showed you this page in my journal, you would see just two sentences:
“Lord, I just want to be chosen.”
And the words He whispered immediately after: “So do I.”
I didn’t expect Jesus to reveal His heart this way, this fast. I sat there, my pen paused, the tears brimming. It was a mic drop of a different kind — it was as if Jesus had been waiting, like a friend, for the exact, right moment to share His heart.
He heard my hurt and then layered His own longing over the top, like a piece of vellum, blending the aches, softening what felt raw, sharp.
Because shared understanding holds the pain, doesn't it? Feeling grief in a safe space calms our breath, slows the tears. Broken hearts see each other.
These three words felt like an offering. Our God, who rains bread and parts seas and crumbles walls and levels giants, knows what it's like to not be chosen. This same mighty, powerful God meets our tender hearts and shares His.
In her poignant, powerful book, The Understory, Lore Wilbert quotes psychologist Curt Thompson who says, “We are all born into the world looking for someone who’s looking for us,” (The Soul of Shame, page 138).
We want to belong. We want to matter. We're looking hard to be found.
And while we know that Jesus is committed to the finding (Luke 19:10), to leaving the ninety-nine to find the one, why does it feel so surprising to hear His heart?
Our Savior wants to be sought. He tells us over and over on the onion-skin-thin pages in our Bibles that when we seek Him with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, we will find Him.
That’s what happened that day. As I sat in my gray chair with an expectant heart, He didn’t fix my earthly circumstance. Instead, with three tiny words, He met my soul. He found me and I found Him.
He chooses us. And He waits to be chosen (Revelation 17:14, 3:20).
Now when the pain comes (because it still does), I draw slow, deep breaths and repeat what He whispered. So do I. So do I. So do I.
Three and half years ago, we began this Hear Him Louder Essay Series. Together, we built a community around a simple invitation to listen for Jesus in our every day. In that time, I’ve heard from so many of you with prayers of your own. Each of us has squared off with hard things that stretched and tore and broke us in deep places. I believe none of us is the same three and a half years later.
Yet in that time, we’ve held firm our commitment to meet Him. More than 75 women have shared their own stories of meeting God in heartache and confusion and trial and how Jesus brought peace, even in unchanged circumstances.
There is power in sharing our stories — we can lean into and even borrow one another’s faith when ours is small. Each story reminds us that Jesus speaks and leads us through what we’re facing. He will whisper what He knows our hearts need to hear, even when it seems nothing “out there” has changed.
Like manna, each word from Him nourishes and sustains.
This essay marks both an end and a beginning. It’s the end of the Hear Him Louder Essay Series and a pause before we usher in the beginning of a podcast. The heart of this series will carry forward, as we continue to hold space to listen for Him. As we listen, we embrace Jesus’ own words as encouragement. When He says, “I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends,“ (Revelation 3:20), He is promising connection and intimacy.
When we listen for His heart, He changes ours. When we invite Him into those frayed places, His perspective reframes ours. His words can change a circumstance. Heal a relationship. Rewire a mindset. He is faithful to answer us, to strengthen our souls, to breathe fresh courage into us.
He chooses us.
He wants to be chosen.
What joy that we can.
“At that very moment I called out to you, you answered me! You strengthened me deep within my soul and breathed fresh courage into me,” (Psalm 138:3 TPT).
Photo credit: Marnie Hammar Photography.
The Hear Him Louder Essay Series is a guest essay series where God's daughters share their stories of hearing God’s whispers in their every day. It’s meant to serve as an invitation to listen for His voice, and as an encouragement for the times when God feels far.
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New to this series? Check out the rest of the series!
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